Original Title: "XPL, Whose Public Sale Was Snatched Up by Whales, Can It Break Through $1 Upon Listing?"

Original Author: Asher, Odaily Planet Daily

Against the backdrop of a cooling overall market sentiment, the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum have experienced a pullback, and the discussion heat of mainstream altcoins has also declined. However, in the community, one still continuously discussed "bombshell-level" project, in addition to yesterday's listing of WLFI, another major focus is the new stablecoin dedicated blockchain Plasma, backed by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legendary investor Peter Thiel, with its token XPL, whose contract transactions have landed on multiple mainstream exchanges.

Why Has Plasma Emerged as a Market Darling?

Plasma has become the new favorite in the market for reasons such as institutional endorsement and clear project positioning.

On the capital side, Plasma is supported by stablecoin giant Tether and Silicon Valley legendary investor Peter Thiel, which is a very strong endorsement in itself. From the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025, the project completed seed and Series A financing rounds, raising a total of $24 million; then in May 2025, the Founders Fund once again invested at a $5 billion valuation. Bitfinex also separately invested $3.5 million to promote the application of USDT in the Bitcoin ecosystem. With such intensive financing pace and capital lineup, Plasma had the aura of a "star project" as soon as it appeared.

In terms of technical design and product positioning, Plasma is not following the old path of a general public chain, but is targeting the stablecoin-native infrastructure. It uses the Bitcoin mainnet as the final settlement layer, inheriting the security of the UTXO model, while also being compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, facilitating seamless smart contract migration. What's more attractive is that all on-chain transactions can be directly paid with USDT Gas, and regular USDT transfers are completely free, significantly lowering the barrier for stablecoin payments.

Building on this foundation, Plasma further strengthens its differentiated advantages. Its privacy feature allows users to selectively conceal transaction information; by using permissionless bridge technology to bring BTC onto the chain, and combining it with Tether's USD liquidity pool, users can achieve low slippage exchanges and BTC-based stablecoin lending. With "zero fees + high performance + secure architecture," Plasma aims to create an on-chain version of the "Visa network," enabling stablecoin payments to truly enter daily scenarios.

How is the Plasma Token Allocated?

XPL Token Model

In mid-July, Plasma revealed the tokenomics of XPL, with a total token supply of 10 billion. The specific allocation is as follows:

· Public Sale: 10% of the total supply, which is 1 billion tokens. Among these, XPL purchased by non-U.S. buyers will be fully unlocked upon the launch of the Plasma public mainnet; XPL purchased by U.S. buyers will be locked for 12 months and will be fully unlocked on July 28, 2026.

· Ecosystem and Project Growth: 40% of the total supply, which is 4 billion tokens. 8% of this will be allocated to strategic partners to provide DeFi incentives, meet liquidity needs, support exchange integrations, and carry out early ecosystem growth activities, which will be unlocked immediately upon the launch of the mainnet; the remaining 32% will be allocated to strategic growth plans aimed at expanding the utility, liquidity, and institutional adoption of the Plasma network, with a proportional monthly unlock over the three years following the mainnet launch.

· Team: 25% of the total supply, which is 2.5 billion tokens. One-third of this will be unlocked one year after the public launch of the mainnet, and the remaining two-thirds will be unlocked proportionally over the following two years.

· Investors: 25% of the total supply, which is 2.5 billion tokens. The unlocking schedule aligns with that of the team.

XPL Token Model

XPL's tokenomics are divided into four parts, with a clear overall allocation, and the team tokens will only start unlocking one year after the mainnet launch, avoiding short-term "dumping" by the project team.

Next, we will focus on the 1 billion tokens allocated for the public sale and the 800 million tokens allocated to strategic partners in the ecosystem and project growth.

Public Sale Allocation

For the 10% allocated for the public sale, the sale price was $0.05, yielding over 12 times the return based on the current XPL contract price (currently around $0.62).

To participate in Plasma's public sale, users needed to deposit a stablecoin on the Ethereum mainnet into the Plasma Vault. On the evening of June 9, the deposit channel was officially opened, allowing users to deposit USDT, USDC, USDS, or DAI into the Plasma Vault on the Ethereum mainnet. The final allocation is calculated based on a "time-weighted share," meaning the earlier and longer the deposit is held, the more allocation the user receives.

The deposit event started with a bang, achieving the target amount in just 2 minutes. During the event, a particular whale/institutional address (address: https://intel.arkm.com/explorer/address/0x790c42D632502949e72Ab0981C2f0D2021141023) singly staked 50 million USDC, accounting for 20% of the total share.

Single Address Deposited 50 Million USDC

Furthermore, a whale spent 39.15 ETH (worth around $100,000) in Gas fees to stake 10.17 million USDC into Plasma, becoming the first staking address.

First Address to Complete Deposit Staking Spent $100,000 in Gas

Due to numerous user reports of failed participation in the deposit event, Plasma raised the deposit cap to 1 billion USDT. Strikingly, within half an hour, another 500 million USDT was "filled up." During this influx, the Amber Group-affiliated address deposited 16.3 million USDT, and the Spartan Group-affiliated address deposited 5 million USDT.

On July 17, Plasma officially commenced its public sale. Users' eligibility for subscription was based on the "time-weighted share" deposited in the Vault previously. The public sale price was set at $0.05 per token, with a final total subscription amount exceeding $373 million. The subscription demand was extremely high, with oversubscription exceeding 7 times.

Binance Finance Allocation

According to official announcements, Plasma partnered with Binance to allocate 1% of the total supply, i.e., 100 million XPL tokens, to users participating in on-chain staking. Additionally, users staking USDT can earn a 2% annualized USDT yield. In the initial stages of the event, Binance set the subscription limit at 250 million USDT with a single account cap of 100,000 USDT, all of which was sold within less than an hour. Subsequently, the platform increased the total subscription limit to 1 billion USDT.

In the second round of public sale, the new $250 million USDT allocation was fully subscribed in just 5 minutes. In response, Binance reduced the individual cap to 10,000 USDT and opened up the remaining $500 million USDT allocation. However, due to the slower subscription rate after the cap reduction, Binance once again raised the individual cap to 50,000 USDT, and the remaining allocation was fully subscribed within a few hours.

Based on Binance's final allocation of $1 billion USDT, users would receive approximately 1,000 XPL tokens for every 10,000 USDT deposited. On the pricing front, XPL had previously surged above $0.84 last week but is currently trading at $0.62 per token under the contract. This means that at the current price, a deposit of 10,000 USDT would yield tokens worth around $600, or up to $840 at the peak price. In addition to the airdrop token rewards, the USDT deposit itself would accrue a 0.33% return over 2 months, translating to a guaranteed return of about $33.

Therefore, taking all these factors into account, for every 10,000 USDT deposited, users would receive $33 in guaranteed returns + 1,000 XPL tokens (worth approximately $600 at the current price and up to $800 at the peak price), with a return rate of approximately 6.3% over 2 months and an annualized rate of nearly 40%.

It is worth noting that besides the 100 million tokens allocated to Binance, the distribution of the remaining 700 million XPL tokens for ecosystem and project growth has not been disclosed yet.

Summary

Following the listing of WLFI, the launch of Plasma has also become a focal point in the market. Based on the fluctuation range of the XPL contract price between $0.5 and $0.8, the total market capitalization of XPL could reach $50 to $80 billion. The maximum circulating supply on the first day was about 18% (tokens of U.S. KYC users will not be immediately unlocked), corresponding to a circulating market cap of approximately $9 to $14.4 billion.

Referring to CoinGecko data, the 100th ranked token in terms of circulating market cap is INJ at around $1.24 billion. Backed by a strong institutional support and being in the current hot stablecoin race, Plasma, with continued market enthusiasm, might potentially break the $1 threshold and achieve a maximum circulating market cap of $18 billion, signaling just the beginning of its upward potential.

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